He was to me. (Thanks to my beautiful wife Marianne and my great kids, Cara and Joey!)

I was gifted with a Kindle Fire HD which is one great lil’ tablet. I love to read and this is soooooo nice. I thought the touch screen would be more of a pain than the regular Kindle’s back and forth buttons. But the touch screen actually makes going from page to page of a book more effortless. The fact that I can also check my e-mail, surf the Web on it (read blogs) and even watch movies on it makes it all the more of a neat gift.

Marianne also bought me a few “QRP – When you care to send the very least” items from Cafe Press. The sweatshirts they sell are so nice! Thick and warm, not flimsy and thin. The design is big too, it takes up a major portion of the front of the shirt, so there’s no mistaking that QRP is the passion of the wearer. I was worried that when the design got enlarged to fill the front of a shirt that it might look fuzzy. It doesn’t! It’s sharp and prominent and other Hams will know right away what’s going on there.

She also brought me the carrying Field Bag, which will be great for carrying my Kindle Fire and my other Android tablet to and from work. My brief case was getting kind of ratty, so this is a good replacement.

Cafe Press does a great job and I’m very happy with both items that Marianne got for me.

I also got a nice pair of warm gloves and Joey gave me a “World’s Best Dad” poster and pen and Cara gave me a very cute “Dad” Christmas ornament for the tree. I did very, very well.

How did you all do in the Zombie Shuffle? Paul NA5N has posted the preliminary results here. I came in the middle of the pack, where is about where I expected to land. I know there are a few more great contesters (such as John K4BAI) who haven’t sent in summaries yet. I will be a happy camper if I remain within the top 20 when all is said and done.

Don’t forget that next Monday night is Straight Key Night. Time for me to get a little practice on the Bug again, before the big event. I sure hope that 2013 turns out to be less stress filled than 2012 was. I really would like to try the “QSO a day” thing for the entire year again. It’s hard to do that when every time you turn around, something comes up that eats up all your time and attention.